- Jim Clark
- Naked Vader. Via ByronBeck.com
The cold and rain on Saturday didn’t dissuade thousands of people from taking off their clothes for Portland’s largest free bike ride: the World Naked Bike Ride poured through Portland’s streets with an estimated 8,000 semi-nude and totally naked people (well, that’s the rough number, anyway. It’s kind of hard to count naked people on bikes).
I was there. In underwear. This was my third time taking part in the World Naked Bike Ride and it’s always a thrill. For some reason, people seem to think the event will be sexy. It’s definitely not sexy. It’s a floppy, lumpy, hilarious event. I like the naked bike ride as a body-positive thing: It’s cool to see a whole bunch of normal naked bodies and remember, “Right. I’m totally normal. No one actually looks like Playboy bunny.”
Well, except for the actual Playboy bunny who turned up to the ride on Saturday and spent some quality time hula hooping on SE Water Avenue surrounded by video cameras and a private security force. She definitely looked like Playboy bunny. But that was a nice reminder, too: “Right. I’m totally normal. Porn stars have skin made from creepy plastic.”
As for the ride itself, this is the third year that the Portland Police have worked closely with organizers to close off the naked bike ride route. The police even sent out a funny press release on Friday, reminding Portlanders that, yes, it is legal to bike naked in this state.
Thanks to the cops keeping cars at bay, there were very few crashes. A couple blogs have sounded off that the ride is “dangerous” and “plagued by alcohol” (edit: whoops, that’s the same post on two different blogs), but The Oregonian reported that there were only three bike crashes requiring someone to be taken the hospital. Not great, but not bad for a ride that involves a ton of not-so-experienced cyclists.
What did you guys think? Who else went or watched the chaos from a bar and/or traffic jam?
I would have posted this all sooner, except I was stuck without photos of the ride because someone stole my camera from my bike at the end of the ride. This naked bike ride is plagued by crime!! Just kidding. That’s the kind of dick move (haHA) I would expect at any event of 8,000 people. It’s 50 percent my fault for leaving my bike bag briefly unattended. (And 50 percent the fault of some jerk who likely stuffed my camera into his American Apparel undies. I hope you enjoy my photos of people’s butts.)
Anyway, you can find more photos of the ride on Byron Beck’s blog and info on how to buy a naked bike ride shirt (oh the irony) on BikePortland.org.
It felt rather short… maybe that was the fact that the bottle necks that plagued last year were reduced to only a couple of places. But why they insist on us going between NE Stark and Belmont via 33rd, rather than taking the ride up to 39th and then over to Hawthorne, I’ll never know.
Fuckin stupid-assed cyclists, not only are they destroying the fabric of our moral socety; they’re not paying any fucking taxes for the roads they’re sullying.
(STFU, Graham, and go answer my question to you on the thread about riding on sidewalks.)
I ride my bike locally and do not use highways. These historically have not paid for themselves, and the difference has to come from subsidies and from property tax and other tax revenue that has nothing to do with driving. And we all pay all kinds of externalized costs from the effects of driving, such as pollution, health care costs from accidents, etc. The whole driving infrastructure gets massive subsidies, so I’m hardly getting any kind of free ride as a cyclist.
And if all we cyclists started driving instead, think how much higher oil and gas prices could be. Simple supply and demand economics.
@Geyser – I’m not convinced. Can you offer any more arguments?
I forget if Graham trolls bikers or not.
Please tax us then! I beg of you to tax me so that I can ride in SW a dedicated bike-lane to work and my kids can ride 4 miles to School without 45 mph traffic bearing down on them in fear of their lives.
i was so pissed that everywhere i turned trying to get home from being out with friends. However I have lived a lot of other places and portland is the coolest, and the naked bike ride is part of that. i say rock on
@geyser: I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I’m here now. What’s your stupid question?
I heard reports of the naked cyclists failing to yield to emergency vehicles at the corner of 39th and Belmont. Good job guys, way to potentially kill people with your smugness and stupidity.
@Graham: Go to the I, Anon thread in question and read. I see no need to repeat what I posted here.
And jake, I fail to see what giving a rebuttal to baseless economic claims has to do with smugness.
@geyser: No. There’s a whole fucking blog devoted to I,Anon. You expect me to go through all of those different posts looking for some stupid shit you asked me? No. Go fuck yourself in the ass with a soda can until you can be bothered to give me a link. It’s not my job to chase after you and whatever inanity you think is relevant.
You really don’t remember the recent I, Anon thread about riding bikes on the sidewalk that you commented on several times? Hint: it’s from this week’s Mercury. It’s not in the I, Anon blog. Would you like me to walk you through how to find it again? Go to the Mercury homepage, scroll down, and look for a picture of a woman on a bike on the left. Or don’t, I don’t really care.
I heard reports that Graham accusing others of smugness is the funniest thing that’s appeared in the Blogtown comments in ages.
@geyeser – Who cares WHAT you wrote, wherever you wrote it? You just demanded that he answer your question. Fine – what is it? Ask it now! Why the hell would he go looking for some secret question you posted? Who the fuck cares what you want to know?
Hi Reyemont,
It’s okay, I love you and Jesus loves you too.
Given that the WNBR is about protest, it seems that spending more time on the west side of the river would make it more of a protest. Riding by big business, even at night, seems a better way to protest. Going through sleepy, east-side neighborhoods seems like a disturbance.
A few years back, the long ride down Burnside from 23rd was a BLAST….I mean an effective way of protesting.
Letting the Portland Police corral the protest by defining the route moves away from the nature of the protest.
This is a call for groups to follow their own route. If you want a safe experience, follow the route. If you can ride your bike in the city, let’s find routes that increase visibility.
I had fun watching it with all the bourgie old people who emerged from Ladd’s. Except next year, you guys need to come up with a better rallying cry than “take off your pants and join us!” I heard that about 20 times and it is NOT compelling.
So it is a ‘protest’??
hahahaha
what a joke!
“No one actually looks like Playboy bunny.”
At least no one that would ever take part in a naked bike ride.
At your first naturist experience, you may feel apprehensive and worried that people will be staring at you. But a visit to truenudist.net is much different than you would experience anywhere else. At there, you will not find people trying to undress you with their eyes, from afar or near, because there is nothing left for the imagination to remove. You will not find people throwing outdated, lewd or offensive pickup lines at you.
At there, my dear, from afar and near, please take your spam away from here.
It was a great experience. It would appear that people that ride bikes are a happier bunch than some of the posters on this blog. There were a lot of beautiful women and men on this ride and I have proof.
I bet the same people complained about Woodstock back in the 1960’s.
http://vimeo.com/25372056
Weak sauce for taking pictures in the first place, Sarah. People with their underwear on snapping photos of naked butts is shitty (haHa) every year.
Graham needs to get laid before he blows a blood vessel.
Chill out man.
@robocat: I don’t understand why it’s weak sauce to take pictures of people in public. Go ahead and try to explain that one.
Why is it (with a few exceptions granted) that the majority of people who wish to be “nudists” look like sh*t naked? I was with a group at one of the locations this carnival passed by, and aside from skinny dudes, one drop dead blond girl (not the playmate, probably like a size ten healthy beautiful natural girl), what we saw was mostly chubby dudes with beards. Do I really need to see this? I am not in the least against the event and supportive of peoples rights but what does this really achieve? I am all for enforcing a healthy perspective of how “normal” people should look(particularly women given the bombardment of bs they receive from media sources) as I am one of you like everybody else, I try to stay in shape and realize I am not perfect either